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Reports

During my travels, I received free accommodation for a night in exchange for writing a daily travel diary. This diary documented how I reached my next destination, the hosts who welcomed me, the food I was offered, and other experiences along the way. Below, you will find the archives of these extensive reports. Please note that English is not my native language, and most entries were written quickly, often around midnight. Enjoy!
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Friday, 30 May 2003
Lunenberg --> Lower Sackville, Nova Scotia, Canada

The original plan was to wake up early and to leave Lunenburg at 8.30 in the morning as Ingrid and Ezra had no problem to drive me all the way back to Halifax, which is a more than one hour drive up north.

I still can't understand that North American perspective that everything that far away is 'just around the corner'. I guess that makes me a real European, doesn't it?

But as I expected, they had a good time last night at the pub (I went back to the B&B around midnight as I had stuff to do on the web)… I got down from my room around 9.30 and then heard the first sounds in the rest of the house.

Pretty soon Ingrid appeared and she clearly had a hangover. "I can't eat anything!" she said. "I haven't had such a hangover in a very long time!"

Ezra made me some eggs and toast for breakfast and we got ready for departure.

On the road to Halifax Ingrid made warnings to Ezra to pull over at any second when she wouldn't feel good. Ezra and I secretly had fun with Ingrid's situation. "It's not funny!" she said. Hehe.

I was happy I stayed with the Root Beer last night, which has no alcohol and consists only out of a few million spoons of sugar.

I won't bore you with more details about this drive to Halifax. It was on a lengthy highway with not much to see, so that might explain why Ingrid and I simply dozed off until Ezra woke us up in Halifax.

They dropped me off on Barrington Street, right in the downtown area of the city. I gave my next hostess a call and she was able to pick me up in the city in about twenty minutes. Perfect!

I dropped by Ceilidh's internet café and they remembered me from my first visit a few weeks ago and the nice lady behind the counter offered me a coffee and wanted to know the latest news about my travels.

Today's new hostess is actually one I already stayed with before. It was Jean Short that picked me up in town. You might remember her as the yoga teacher in the May 12-report. With a train to catch tomorrow, she had welcomed me for another stay at her family's house.

Her daughter Rana, the pilot, wasn't home today, she was visiting her boyfriend on Prince Edward Island and through the phone she told me how disappointed she was. "She wanted to take you for a flight over Halifax," Jean told me. Really!? Wow. Oops. Sorry Rana.

But this day I also met up with Jean's husband Wade, who I did not meet the previous time. He was in Newfoundland then at that time. Wade is a Newfie and he is proud of it. Next to being a man in the industry of big water pumps he is a interesting man who also like to make stained glass for a hobby. And you see what he makes, it is very impressive.

At their home I met up with Caleb again, Rana's little boy and quickly saw the 19-year-old Megan , before she headed to her part-time job.

Jean was preparing cakes and beavertail dough for a community event that takes place in the park tomorrow. "Ha-ha, they will see a healthy yoga teacher selling deep fried beavertails. It just doesn't sound correct, does it?"

For dinner Jean wanted to take me to a special place in Halifax. "It is a place where people of all sorts hang out and just relax. And the food is excellent!"

So that got my attention. We ended up at a place called Vienna, strangely located above a Laundromat (which is part of the restaurant) where an Egyptian man runs the place and serves Lebanese food.

And this was also the place where Megan recently found her job. She advised me to go for a Mediterranean combo, as I never had any Lebanese food before. And it was good. The Lebanese kitchen seems to like to wrap anything in dough and use different kinds of spices to have a salad. That meal was very good!

It wasn't very busy when we were there, which thwarted Jean a bit. She probably wanted to show this active and funky place with a lot of people, but they weren't around today. But still I appreciated her choice for good food above a fancy looking restaurant. Wade didn't really agree on that and he prefers a real restaurant over a food place like this. "As a Newfie he doesn't often eat what he doesn't know," Jean joked.

With a 20-hours train ride to Montreal coming up tomorrow, I needed some help with something to eat on that train. Fortunately Wade and Jean were happy to help me out with that (lucky me!) and during their own shopping at the superstore in Bedford (in between Halifax and Lower Sackville) they let me pick whatever I might need on that train.

I still find it frustrating to shop for groceries in this country. There is just so much variation of the same stuff. It was even hard to find a yoghurt that actually had fat in it, instead of all the 24 variations of fat-frees.

I think you can easily take out half the products in these superstores and nobody will ever miss them. Sorry, am I being too much of a European here again?

So after dinner we went to some shopping and back home I was happy that I won't be starving on the train tomorrow.

There was one thing that Jean still wanted to do with me: another private yoga lesson.

I told her I am experiencing some minor problems with my back again lately and when I am tired (when am I not?) my neck hurt a bit. So we went down to her under-construction yoga studio and spent almost an hour doing various yoga exercises to relax and stretch out all these muscles of mine.

I specifically enjoyed the half an hour of meditation, where I had to concentrate totally on my breathing and stick with that without letting my mind wonder around to other thoughts. That was very relaxing and I'll take these lessons along with me!

It was already late in the evening when we wrapped up these relaxations lessons, my hosts headed to bed. I spent another few hours on my laptop writing out these reports for you and headed off myself too. Tomorrow I'll sleep on a train!

Good night Lower Sackville!

Ramon.

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